Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Deadline

Listen up, people.  We only have one month left to complete our new year's resolutions!   I personally have four down, one 12/13 finished, and one upon which I have made no lasting progress in the past three years.*  I just keep tweaking the wording and making it a resolution each year.  And so, in desperation I ask you to join with me in one last push to the finish.  You can work on your own straggling resolution, or join with me in mine.  I just need a little bit of peer pressure. 

By December 31 I will be able to complete 20 real push ups in a row.  I will accomplish this by putting in three sets of push ups, six days each week starting today.  Let me know how you're going to finish your resolution and I'll nag you in return.

* In my defense, I have given birth twice in the last three years.  That's almost as good as doing push ups right?

2 Comments:

Blogger Kristi said...

My resolutions were to floss and read my scriptures every day. I now regularly floss about three times a week and read my scriptures an average of five times a week. Both of those are better than last year, but not quite what I hoped for.

I think I'll go floss while I read. Thanks for the reminder.

11:21 PM  
Blogger Cary said...

You can do it!

If you want, you could complement your current plan with a pyramid type of workout. I get pretty good results from it, and it's pretty popular with spec ops (and those guys look like they're in pretty good shape, right?).

The basic idea is that you start with less, then do more, then do your most, and then back off and do a little less, and then start over again (with the hope that your least amount will be higher the next time around).

So for 20 push-ups, a pyramid plan could be to do 3 sets of push ups every day but the number in each set will slowly increase until midweek where it will peak and then decrease back down.

For the first week, the midweek peak could be 5 (depending on your starting point right now), and you could lead up to it by doing 3 sets of 2 on Monday, 3 sets of 3 on Tuesday, 3 sets of 4 on Wednesday, 3 sets of 5 on Thursday, then back down to 3 sets of 4 on Friday, 3 sets of 3 on Saturday, and then rest on Sunday. The second week the midweek peak would be 10, then the third it'd be 15, and finally, the last week 20!

There's a couple good things about it: one, it motivates you to do more than you think you can because you know you only have to do that big set once and then you get to ease up. And two, it gives your muscles time to recover - which is really important. You'll actually get stronger faster if you start slow, ramp it up, slow it down again, take a break, and start over rather than just doing the same thing over and over again.

That's just my blabbering two cents. Either way, do what works for you! You can do it!

11:26 PM  

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